John Kerry to travel to Ukraine

Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Ukraine for meetings on Tuesday as President Barack Obama continues to work the phones with U.S. allies.

Obama discussed the situation in Ukraine on Sunday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski, a senior administration official said.

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“The president’s point in all of his calls is to point out the complete illegitimacy of Russia’s intervention in the Crimea and Ukraine,” the official said.

Russia has moved 6,000 airborne and ground troops into the Crimean peninsula, where it now has “complete operational control,” another senior administration official said. The official said NATO is preparing a joint statement to be signed by all 28 members condemning Russia’s actions.

In Kiev, Kerry will meet senior officials in Ukraine’s new government, members of its legislature and civil society, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

“The secretary will reaffirm the United States’ strong support for Ukrainian sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity, and the right of the Ukrainian people to determine their own future, without outside interference or provocation,” Psaki said.

Already, the Obama administration has cancelled a series of meetings between U.S. and Russian officials on trade and defense issues, the senior administration official said. The U.S. trade representative will not travel to Moscow this week as planned, an upcoming Russian government visit to the U.S. on energy cooperation was halted and joint naval exercises will not take place as scheduled, the official said.

Obama administration officials said they will continue to consider an array of punitive options against Russia, though officials who spoke on a background call with reporters Sunday said the government’s focus is on political, diplomatic and economic responses, not a military one.

“We are also looking with allies and partners at a broad menu of options to curtail our economic and trade relationships, to look at pressure on individuals who may have been responsible and to curtail normal activity we may have with Russia to make it clear how we feel about this,” the official said.

Kerry took great pains Sunday to say that the Ukrainian crisis isn’t a replay of the Cold War, even as he described the situation and its implications in terms reminiscent of that era.

During appearances on three major network shows, Kerry accused Russia of “19th century behavior in the 21st century.”

He also listed potential penalties for Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine, the most significant being removing the country from the Group of Eight major industrial nations.

“We’re not trying to make this a battle between East and West; we’re not trying to make this a Cold War,” Kerry said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “We hope that this can be resolved according to the standards of the 21st century. And frankly to the standards of the G-8. If Russia wants to be a G-8 country, it needs to behave like a G-8 country.”

Kerry’s attempt to walk a fine rhetorical line is more evidence of the problem faced by the United States: There are few good options to beat back Vladimir Putin’s encroachment on Ukraine.

Still, Kerry tried to make the case Sunday that Obama has a “broad array” of economic and diplomatic options at its disposal to punish Russia.

Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” Kerry said Russia could be removed from the Group of Eight if it does not back off its aggression in Ukraine. The G-8, which also includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom, formed in 1975 as the G-7 and added Russia in 1998.

The G-8 countries are scheduled to convene next in Sochi, Russia, in June. The White House said Saturday that it is suspending “upcoming participation in preparatory meetings” for the June summit but has not yet said whether it will not participate in the meeting.

“Russia has engaged in a military act of aggression against another country, and it has huge risks,” Kerry said. “It’s a 19th century act in the 21st century that really puts at question Russia’s capacity to be within the G-8.”

Those options, Kerry said on CBS, include bans on Russian visas to the Westand freezing assets of Russian companies, and “American businesses may well want to start thinking twice about whether they want to do business with a country that behaves like this.”

Kerry’s talking points Sunday were tinged in history. His repeated references to the 19th century are a nod to one of Russia’s most embarrassing defeats: Czar Nicholas I in 1853 launched the Crimean War in an effort ostensibly to protect orthodox Christian Russians in the Ottoman Empire. Western European countries subsequently routed the Russians.

And Kerry’s suggestions of Russian alternatives to invading Ukraine mocked Russian intransigence when the United States has sought to intervene in Syria against Bashar Assad.

“If they have legitimate concerns … about Russian-speaking people in Ukraine, there are plenty of ways to deal with that without invading the country,” Kerry said on ABC. “They have the ability to work with the government; they could work with us, they could work with the U.N. They could call for observers to be put in the country. There are all kinds of alternatives.”